In previous blog posts I mentioned how, over the course of time, I would be putting together a bunch of articles on some of the major highlights from the recent Enterprise 2.0 Summit event that I attended in Paris by the beginning of February. And over time I am realising that most of those highlights are finding out their way in a multitude of different entries over here when talking about specific topics related to Enterprise 2.0 and Social Networking for Business. Except perhaps for this one that I would like to share with you folks today, which I think is pretty unique on its own, but quite remarkable altogether. What if Enterprise 2.0 was all about having fun while getting the job done? That sounds perhaps a little bit utopian don’t you think? But what if it were rather accurate? What if we would be capable of demonstrating that the Social Enterprise can be a fun place, while still getting work done? Sounds pretty much ideal, don’t you think? Well, Fabian Seewald has made it happen. And it’s just beautiful! Over the course of the years I have bumped into a good number of different definitions and descriptions of both Enterprise 2.0 (and the Social Enterprise) from the original one coined by my good friend Andy McAfee in 2006 to a whole bunch of others. However, for the case of the Social Enterprise it’s rather interesting and noteworthy to acknowledge how, once again, we all keep bastardising original efforts, concepts and movements, along the same lines as we do on a regular basis with Social Business! Looks like we haven’t learned much in this regard. We seriously need to start thinking about something new that would fit in the right purpose without trumping efforts from other rather well established concepts. Not sure whether we would need to ditch altogether the wording of Social, but certainly we need to put a stop to taking over things that do not belong to us in the first place and then claim them as our own. We should probably smarten up a bit in that regard. For instance, David Cushman talks about Open Business and he surely strikes a chord with it. We surely need plenty more fresh thinking in that regard! But then again, this is when folks like my good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Fabian Seewald come to our rescue with a new refreshing approach of describing and defining what it is like becoming a social enterprise and how Enterprise 2.0 has been changing the game all along in the last few years. While we were in Paris at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit Fabian presented about Dundu, a collaborative research project that aims at helping teams become more effective around open knowledge sharing and collaboration. Really worth while checking it out, specially, if you would want to know what that is all about in the real physical world. But at the same time he also spent a bit of time putting together a short video clip where he described Enterprise 2.0 in a much more graphical and joyful manner: through juggling! How cool is that? Actually how scary is that? I mean, how many times have we, folks heavily involved with Enterprise 2.0 and its adoption behind the firewall, been feeling we have been doing far too much juggling to make it all work altogether nicely and without losing our sanity along the way? How many times have we pondered about whether we could take just another ball to keep up with the juggling before it all collapses? Far too many, I am sure, don’t you think? That’s why this absolutely delightful video would make your day probably in helping you describe what Enterprise 2.0 is all about and what you may have been doing for the last couple of years. It’s just priceless! Usually, I get to describe a little bit what the content is from the video links I get to share over here, but this time around I am going to make an exception and don’t spoil the fun. I would just ask you to pause for a minute, sit down, relax, press the play button on the embedded code below and watch this nearly 2 minute long video clip that would surely make you smile, but at the same time relay, pretty accurately, what becoming a Social Enterprise is all about. Just brilliant! And, if not, judge for yourselves: Now, who can say again that Enterprise 2.0 cannot be plenty of good fun, entertaining, joyous AND rather enlightening and quite a learning experience altogether after watching that short video clip? Well, guess they would need to watch Fabian in action to realise what we are all about when trying to push gently the corporate world into becoming much more open, interconnected, networked, transparent, nimble, collaborative, knowledge sharing prone business leaving the silos behind (where appropriate) and realising that it’s all about provoking a shift, a change in our mindset, towards becoming much more effective at what we do at work, but thinking in terms of networks and communities getting the work done and not so much teams or structured, rigid hierarchies. Wirearchy anyone?

You may remember how on the last blog post that I put together over here a few days back, I mentioned how I was on my way to participate and attend the Enterprise 2.0 event in Boston and how, depending on the connectivity I may have had during the course of the week, there would be a good chance, or not, for me to share plenty of the highlights we experienced throughout four rather intense days, all thanks to one of my favourite online activities as of late, while attending face to face events: live tweeting. Well, the event is now over, the connectivity was good, the excitement is all intact, I am back into my regular blogging schedule for a while (Since summer just hit over here and there seems to be a bit of a conference break going on till, at least, September) and there isn’t any extended business trip in the horizon for the next couple of months, so I’m getting down to business, once again, and I’m truly delighted to be sharing with you some of the major, key learnings I went through while attending Enterprise 2.0 this year. Ready? Yes, I know, me, too! Let’s do it! I have already got a couple of draft blog posts that I will be sharing over here over the course of the next few days on what I learned from the event itself, but before we dive into those and I begin my journey with all of you into detailing what the event of events around Enterprise 2.0 was like for this year, I would love to point you to some outstanding live blogging that took place throughout the week from a couple of my good friends who, once again, kept raising up the level of true, gifted writing skills you need to have in order to share with that level of detail around face to face conference events. If not, judge for yourselves.  Check out the absolutely delightful blog posts that both Mary Abraham and Bill Ives shared across during the entire week on what they learned from the various different keynote and breakout sessions, along with the pre-conference workshop they attended. If you were there physically you would truly enjoy going through the various articles to get an incredibly good refresher of what was discussed and shared openly, and if you weren’t attending, going and reading through each and everyone of those entries would be just as good as having attended the sessions live! Yes, I know, I’m not exaggerating, they are that good! We are truly privileged to have folks like Mary and Bill willing to put into writing all of that insight, passion, know-how, experiences, expertise, etc. etc. around Social Business that permeated throughout the entire event. So I cannot strongly encourage you all enough to go through and read from their blog posts to get a good glimpse of what the event was like. Just brilliant! From my own perspective, and like I mentioned on the last article I shared over here, I decided a few months back to follow a different approach and instead of keeping up with live blogging, or sharing rather lengthy blog posts with the highlights, like I used to do, I’m going to invest rather heavily on something much more immediate and far reaching in the short term - while things happening in real-time, that is, where the conversations are happening,- and share that stuff across. Of course, I am talking about Twitter and doing plenty of live tweeting on the sides while attending those sessions. Specially, now that I have found a really cool method to curate all of those live tweets without going crazy in the process. With Snap Bird.  Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I won’t be putting together more blog posts highlighting some of the key takeaways I brought with me from the Enterprise 2.0 event; like I said, I already have got a couple of entries I would be sharing across over here in the next few days. However, what I will be doing is hoping to augment the overall experience for those folks who may not have attended, or those who had a chance to, but would want to revive what it was like, and share across those curated live tweets as a .PDF file that you can download, or watch online through Slideshare.  Well, just like I have started doing for a good number of conference events that I have participated in this year so far, I’m now ready to go ahead and share across with you the live tweeting I did of the #e2conf event, since I have just uploaded the .PDF file into Slideshare and it is ready to go. Here’s the embedded code, if you would want to dive into it right away:  Live Tweeting Highlights from #e2conf Event, Boston, June 2012 View more documents from Luis Suarez You will notice though how, at times, there were some time lapses where I didn’t do much live tweeting at all, and I must apologise for that, since it wasn’t due to the lack of connectivity while at the event itself, which was brilliant throughout the whole four days, except perhaps for Thursday morning when it became a bit patchy. Anyway, it was all due to the continuous silly limitations that Twitter keeps imposing over itself when limiting the amount of tweets you can share into your timeline over the course of one hour. I seem to have surpassed those limits a few times and there is nothing else to do than wait for it to cool off and come back for more. Very frustrating altogether, I can tell you, specially, when you are live tweeting a rather hot session you would want to spread the message around all over the place and you just realise you are blocked and can’t do much else other than … wait! Lucky enough, while Twitter is trying to get their act together, if ever, since that issue has been there all along, right from the start!, I was reminded how I needed to look back into something that I did nearly three years ago and quite consistently: have a dedicated Twitter ID handle just for live tweeting of face to face conference events. Indeed, for those who still remember, I will be bringing up @elsuacon to life again from here onwards for the various different face to face conference events that I will be participating in after the summer break. That way, those quiet time lapses would be reduced down to a minimum and help provide a bit more of a complete picture of what the keynotes and breakout sessions would be like. Feel free to follow that Twitter ID at your own risk of suffering from quite a bit of that live twitterrhea For now though, that would be it. While I ramp up the various different blog posts on the major key takeaways from this year’s Enterprise 2.0 event (Around subjects like Facilitating Effectively Online Communities, Community Building Methodologies, Social Network Analysis, Task Centric Computing, Gamification, Informal / Social Learning, Social Fatigue, etc. etc.) I am going to leave you all with the live tweets as a teaser of what’s to come… Hope you enjoyed them just as much as I did sharing those  annotations across and surely look forward to the next one. Although for now, I am certainly looking forward to that extended summer break from the conference scene, hoping to get back into my usual regular blogging schedule. Thanks for sticking around so far! And stay tuned! There is plenty more to come!

After a couple of days back home, unwinding and relaxing a bit from quite a hectic schedule at work, it is that time again for yours truly to be on the road again. Every year, they keep saying that October and November are conference events months, now that the summer holidays are over and it is "time to get back to work" (As if we ever stop, right?) and judging from my current current travelling schedule till mid-December I am beginning to believe on that one pretty badly. I have just gotten started with another business trip, this time around a bit longer than usual since I will be going through Madrid, Apeldoorn, Amsterdam, Brighton, Montpellier and then back home again, and I couldn’t stop reflecting about what’s the main reason why I am falling in love, once again, with business travelling: carpe diem. Indeed, I have been working in such a large corporate world as IBM’s for over 15 years and during the course of that time I have been fortunate enough to live through periods of time where I truly loved business travelling, specially, in the late 90s, and then again there have been plenty of other occasions where I wasn’t very fond of it. Yet, I am realising that over the course of the last few months I am enjoying it quite a bit, once again, and since a bunch of folks have asked me offline why has that happened, what made it tick, I thought I would share a couple of the reasons as to why, specially, when, perhaps for the majority of people out there, it is no longer an enjoyable experience as it used to be. To start off, I am not ready just yet to kill my day job, as Rolf Potts once beautifully described over at this delightful read on "How to Kill Your Day Job and Travel the World". I am not sure whether you may have read his article, but if you haven’t I can strongly recommend you go through it. You will find plenty of reasons in it that would confirm why travelling the world is perhaps one of the most fascinating activities that we, humans, once unbeatable and untireable nomads, used to master above any other species, before we became sedentary, changing completely plenty of our daily habits and routines. It will also help you understand how, in my own case, I am one of those lucky people who instead of quitting his job to start travelling the world, it’s the job itself that I have and the stuff that I do on a daily basis as a social computing evangelist, helping spread the word on Social Business across the world, both internally and externally, that’s allowing me to have that flexbility and freedom to travel along where work would want to take me. Remember when I wrote not long ago that work is no longer a physical space, a traditional office, but more of a state of mind? Well, that includes travelling as well, which is what I have been doing for a while taking that traditional concept of the office with me, wherever I may well be going, as long as I have got my MacBook Air or my iPad and my iPhone and a live Internet connection. The interesting thing though, and perhaps the main reason why I wanted to put together this blog post in the first place, is because I am not too sure how long it would last, or whether it would be far too long before the time arrives where I would have to stop it. No, I am not referring about quitting my job any time soon, or just move on to something else that would prevent me from travelling again on a more or less regular basis. I am still having a blast, I still believe I have been enjoying, all along, my dream job. I love what I do. What I am referring to is to the fact that things, global events, intrincate happenings are starting to take place out there with such complexity in their unexpected outcomes that I am beginning to sense travelling in general will turn out to be a luxury very very soon for just a few, more than anything else. And that’s why I am taking the opportunity to seize the day, i.e. carpe diem, and travel as much as I possibly can now that I am still relatively young, understanding how, seeing how certain global events are developing further, there may well be a time when travelling in general would no longer be that easy, accommodating nor comfortable, never mind somewhat affordable. However, adapting to that new mentality towards business travelling, where a while ago I decided to just take it as it is, hasn’t been easy. It’s taken quite a bit of adaptation, becoming more flexible, understanding, condescending, relaxed and a whole bunch of other things I am sure most of you are already familiar with. I had to continue building on my patience levels, understanding and embracing that at any given point things could go wrong and that when life gives you lemons the best thing you can do is make one heck of a delicious lemonade for everyone to enjoy, not just for yourself, which is probably my own way to keep up with blogging, while on the move, hoping to share some of that lemonade with those interested in reading further along. And in helping me understand and embrace that new mantra of enjoying, once again, business travelling I just couldn’t help reflect on a recent article put together by my good friend Ross Dawson that has helped me tremendously on not only understanding the advantages and disadvantages of business travelling, but also come up with strategies to help me get the most out of it, time and time again. In "Travelling for work: 7 principles for productivity and value" Ross put together some of the main principles that he has adopted for when he is on the road / air to get the most out of his travelling experience. No, I am not going to reproduce them all or anything, I would encourage you, instead, to go ahead and read further along, but I surely would want to share with you a teaser by just listing a couple of notes over here, so that you can see what you would be able to find in his rather insightful article: "Travelling is the ultimate learning experience Travelling allows you to open up your perceptions and thinking Travelling is about connecting Have big-picture projects to work on Focus on health and fitness  Work out your personal jet lag strategy Ensure everything you need is in the cloud" I can certainly relate to a few of the things that Ross indicated on that article, like the overall massive learning experience, like how travelling helps you open up your perceptions and thinking not just to other countries, but also to their cultures, customers, languages, traditions, etc. etc. how, specially, travelling is all about connecting with other people, meeting old friends, and new ones, about enriching experiences with face to face meetups over a lovely meal, or drinks, that surely make it all up worth while living through them. They help you become a better person, to grow further; they help you understand why people behave and do things in a certain way, they help you become a whole lot more tolerant about things and people around you, which is something that I can certainly see the world needing plenty of it at the moment. All of that without neglecting the work you are supposed to be getting done while on the move or looking after your health and fitness to ensure you can get the best results from each and every single business trip. And if you can learn how to fight that jet lag all the better. Perhaps one day I will share a short blog post highlighting how I learn to deal with it and how I haven’t experienced it a single bit in the last 10 years or so. It’s really fascinating though how, subconsciously, after having read his article a couple of months ago, I have been taking into practice plenty of his advice and many tips, along with some additional other key learnings, hints and tips, tricks, etc. etc. I have been incorporating over time myself as well, and how by adapting to the circumstances one finally gets to comprehend how humans were designed for travelling after all. Our innate ability to adapt to the medium, regardless of how tough it may well be, while getting the most out of it and its circumsntances, is just remarkable and once one starts embracing that the end-results are ever so much better, to the point where one begins to even enjoy it. And that’s exactly what I am doing at the moment. Yes, I know, it’s a crazy schedule. Yes, it’s frantic at times. Yes, it’s incredibly complex to figure out how to make it all work, but it is also rather accurate how rewarding it can well be facing up all of these challenges and opportunities to keep up with one’s learning curve of life, to reach out and connect with other people, to get to know the world a little bit better, to continue treasuring that unique opportunity of being in on country, one culture, one language, and then the next day in another, completely different altogether. And eventually at some point head back home and enjoy the little pleasures of what you have built up over time in your little corner of the world… Yet, I know that business travelling is not going to last for much longer. I’m sensing things are going to change and rather drastically far too soon, seeing how tough certain things are getting, i.e. the current financial econoclypse we are going through, the geopolitical complex world we live in, the rampant conflicts growing at a rather alarming pace, combined perhaps with our lack of being a bit more understanding and tolerant with those around us, our unwillingness to help others in need, our selfish attitude and envy of what others half, while we see others suffering and so forth somehow it is, finally,  confirming, for yours truly, how the days of travelling for the vast majority of us may well be numbered over the next few months. Sadly. And that’s perhaps the main reason why this year I decided to embark myself on that lovely boat of business travelling, hoping to seize that opportunity to see the world, keep spreading the message on all of that social business stuff I have been rather passionate about for a good while, sharing across what I learn and build further along on it, meet up with plenty of those people, whether work colleagues and plenty of other good friends around the world, who share that very same passion, hoping that as a result of that continued learning experience, one, living and embracing a much more interconnected, networked, intelligent and smarter world, can continue helping make a difference, not just for myself, but with whoever else would want to change the world to become a better place. For everyone.

Earlier on in the year, while doing some casual reading out there on the Web around HR related topics and how it’s been impacted by the world of Social, now that it’s become my new focus area around Open Business, I bumped into an article at Forbes that clearly reminded me how we may not have learned much in the last 18 years around knowledge sharing, collaboration, connecting and building personal business relationships through digital tools and the overall concept of social networking for business, as we keep applying lipstick on a pig trying to dump traditional social components into every single aspect of a business organisation, whether Sales, Marketing, Communications, Development, Retail, and, now, of course, Human Resources as well, since it seems to the hot topic du jour that everyone is trying to hop into. But seriously? Haven’t we learned anything in the last 18 years since we had the first instances of social software tools with blogs and wikis? It looks like we haven’t.  At least, judging from that article Jeanne Meister published earlier on under the heading "2013 - The Year of Social HR" and where she gets to develop further on a good number of different social media trends that will be affecting HR over the course of the next year. It’s interesting to note how those very same trends attempted to have some kind of impact around other areas of the business and with very mixed results. So it looks like it’s now a good time to try them out on HR and see if they would work. Never mind the extended first hand experience we have had in the past proving that some of those trends just didn’t even make the mark. Shouldn’t we be aiming higher with regards to HR and the impact of Social for that matter?  Allow me to explain briefly further along tackling each and everyone of those various different trends that Jeanne mentions on that article to explain a little bit of what I mean:  Gamification Becomes A Standard Practice Well, I surely hope it won’t, and big time! I know that in the recent past I haven’t written much around the whole topic of gamification or serious games at work, but those folks who know me from interactions on several social networking tools out there would agree with you that it’s currently one of my pet peeves from the world of Social. More than anything else because we have been trying it out for the last 15 to 18 years in the field of Knowledge Management and because time and time again it keeps failing under a singular, specific premise, amongst several others, that keeps getting ignored time and time again: put a gamification engine of whatever the sort behind the firewall and people will naturally tend to game it, never mind the unhealthy competitive nature that will inspire knowledge workers to protect and hoard their own knowledge even more, so that they can continue gaming the system to be on top! Therefore making it a waste of time and resources, as well as a huge disappointment for the entire workforce for not delivering much on helping improve engagement, after all. It may well be a matter of semantics, but for as long as we keep using gamification as the wording / concept it will never stick around in the corporate world as we know it, based on those couple of reasons I shared above. An alternative? Probably I would go with Behavioural Dynamics, which has got completely different connotations to what gamification has been all along, and perhaps I should develop further in additional blog posts what is meant with that behavioural dynamics, to help influence how knowledge workers engage through social technologies behind the firewall.  I, for once, would hope that gamification and social business vendors would finally put a stop on wanting to infantilise the corporate world as we know it, because that’s essentially what they are doing. You can’t engage knowledge workers by treating them like kids playing silly games of gaining points here and there, competing with one another in an unhealthy manner, showing with pride their badges. For what purpose? Reputation? Engagement? Really? See? Gaming the system will provoke one single element to come out that could even destroy the corporate culture of your own organisation: lack of value add from your own online interactions with others, just to earn that badge. We have already done this in the past with KM and we don’t seem to have learned much about it, have we? If HR would want to re-engage back the knowledge workforce I would certainly stop focusing on gamification and instead adopt the mantra of Open Business as in Open HR, meaning, becoming more open and transparent around both HR and Human driven processes, engage in direct dialogue with the workforce to find out the many different reasons they may have as to why they are no longer feeling engaged, to evaluate what can be done to revert the change, be capable of accepting constructive criticism not only on what works, but mostly on what doesn’t work, so that HR can have an option AND the opportunity to revert the tide back again. And, overall, bring back into the conversation topics like equity, democracy, meritocracy, social eminence, trust, open knowledge sharing and collaboration, meaning, purpose, focus, motivation and so forth, which have been missing on HR’s narrative for far too long! The Death of the Resume Nothing really new on this one either, I am afraid. Not even a trend anymore, but more of a reality, I can imagine. For instance, I just can’t remember the last time that I updated my official CV. I think it must have been about 8 to 9 years ago, if not longer!, yet in all of that time I have been moving around in between projects, business units and what not and I never had to revert back to the CV to show what my skills and experience are on a particular subject matter. Instead, indeed, both my personal business blog, and, specially, my extended social networks have become my new CV, which is probably the reason why my curriculum has now become the first page of Google Search results for "Luis Suarez" (i.e. my blog et al). See? Building a digital footprint is now more the norm, rather than the exception, and perhaps the end goal for all knowledge workers out there wanting to establish themselves demonstrating their subject matter expertise and their passion for a particular topic by making a smarter use of the digital tools to not just get the message across, but also to make sense of it all through meaningful conversations. Something that Howard Rheingold has described beautifully on his most recent book Net Smart. The primary goal over here for HR then would be to help prepare knowledge workers to become more knowledgable and savvy to move their traditional, fixed, always out of date, paper based CV into the digital world where it’s constantly updated on a regular basis and with perhaps much more accuracy, since it will incorporate both the expertise from those knowledge workers, along with their networks’, by how they demonstrate their thought leadership always adding business value into the conversation(s). Your Klout Score Will Become A Measurable Currency Goodness! I surely hope not! In fact, I would strongly encourage everyone that every time you may bump into a job vacancy where they are asking for your Klout score, or to have a certain score for the job, to not even think about joining that firm, because right there they are reflecting how they don’t respect much your own privacy as a knowledge worker, based on how Klout destroys it by just trying to figure out how influential you are in social networks by being rather intrusive, never mind how flaky the algorithm is and how restrictive it is when measuring that social influence since it just focuses on the easy part: how verbose you may well be in blasting out your marketing messages out to others!  Yikes! No, thanks! Seriously, if you are looking for a job, and in that job description HR mentions the word Klout, the best thing you can do is run away! As fast as you can! There are way better jobs out there waiting for you where your privacy is well respected while measuring your social influence in an smart and responsible manner. Alternatives for HR? Look into the bigger picture. Look into how you can measure the influence of knowledge workers out there in the digital world by focusing more on the conversations and the value add they put forward in their various networks and communities, rather than how many times they manage to blast out their own marketing messages without focusing on anything else. This is something that other services like Little Bird do extremely well, that is, focus on the networks, the communities, and how they are influenced by those experts (More on Little Bird shortly, by the way…) Personal Branding Will Be A Required Skill Not much of a trend this one either, is it? From the moment that knowledge workers are keen on going digital, using whatever the social Web technologies in place, this is no longer a growing trend, but a well established one. In fact, it’s been in the making for nearly 10 years now, even way before Enterprise 2.0 became the buzzword, when folks resorted to their own personal business blogs as their best personal branding tools. And that’s still going rather strong when that aspect has been hugely amplified and augmented with all of the social networking sites we are all far too familiar with.  The role of HR in this one, as an opportunity to lead by example on that mantra of Open HR, is that one of helping knowledge workers facilitate plenty of opportunities to build their digital footprint with enough resources, education, coaching, mentoring, facilitation, so that instead of becoming a hurdle where some HR departments may not be in favour of employees being out there in the open in fear of being snatched by talent hunters, they work even harder to make that happen so that they can have a chance to fight for them by caring about them. There is nothing for HR to take more pride on than having your employee knowledge workforce being enticed by talent hunters to make a move. That’s basically sending out there a tremendous message: you have got a high performing, rather talented, motivated and engaged team. It’s your job now, HR’s, to retain it.  Recruiters Will Find You Before You Know You Are Looking For A Job Finally, perhaps the most interesting of the various different trends that Jeanne talks about on that Forbes piece, not so much for the opportunity of looking for a job, way before you sense you may well be in that situation, but, specially, from the perspective that this trend on its own could well be the confirmation of another well known one that will surely tear apart the traditional concept of the knowledge workforce and the corporate world as we know it. Essentially, the shift from the traditional payroll employee workforce into that free agent, freelancer workforce that gathers around networks and communities to deliver their expertise and extensive know-how, get paid for it in good terms, and then move elsewhere.  This is the one area where HR would surely need to go through a major transformation from being right at the centre of managing employees / resources, to be shifted around the edges facilitating alumni networks, freelancers, and a small core group of employees to be part of the same ecosystem. One that, at long last, is going to reach the final frontier: The Social Web.  2013 may well be the year of Social HR, we will have to wait and see, but what I do know is that judging from the reflections I have shared above 2013 certainly is going to be the year of Open HR, where openness, transparency, publicy, equity, trust, engagement, meritocracy, purpose, meaning, online / digital reputation, recognition of networks and communities vs. just individuals are becoming common HR speak, that is, HR’s new narrative to be able to re-engage back the workforce and if we were just to learn a little bit from what we have done in the recent past, what worked AND what didn’t work!, there is only one way forward: focus on the success of your failure(s)! Essentially, learn from them, don’t make the same mistakes again and continue through that learning and sustainable growth path. Yes, I know, there won’t be a way back! Fascinating and exciting times, indeed!

You know that moment when you realise that everything you have done in the last 5 and a half years has not been really worth while at all and forces you to go through a massive hard reset, challenging your main core beliefs, in terms of what has motivated you quite a lot in this whole Social / Open [r]evolution space over the course of all of that time? Well, that is the "moment" I have just been experiencing in the last 20 weeks of Year 6 of "Life Without eMail" culminating this week with something I thought I would never be able to see, say or talk about again. And while I can imagine there would be plenty of you folks out there who may be wondering whether I am on the brink of giving up on giving up corporate email, I am afraid nothing further than the truth, despite the fact it may look as if I have lost the war (on email) altogether. I am still as strong as ever in wanting to think outside the Inbox, but acknowledging a fact that I never thought I would be pondering about much, after all of this time being heavily involved with social networking for business: going back to basics! Indeed, I am not too sure what may have happened, but over the course of those 20 weeks (Yes, I know, that’s 5 months right there!) I have noticed a steady increase on the overall amount of incoming emails I have been receiving at work and it’s been rather interesting to see this phenomenon developing further along with intrigue and awe at the same time. It started already on my previous job role, and continuing along in the new one, where it looks like despite the huge shift towards embracing social technologies at work, the volume of incoming email has skyrocketed to levels that have brought me back to the beginning, in 2008. Yes, that drastic. All along, I have been reflecting on the potential reasons as to why my fellow IBM colleagues keep insisting on relying for vast majority of interactions on email vs. social tools and while I may not have all of the conclusions sorted out and in place, just yet, I can tell you I’m starting to believe it’s more than anything else because people, in general, don’t feel comfortable enough, just yet, it seems, about narrating their work, working out loud, for the benefit of others, including total strangers, and therefore they still prefer email as that is a medium they control in terms of reach, access and knowledge shared. How illusory, I know! I have been mentioning in both Twitter and Google Plus how surprising this sudden change has been for yours truly and a couple of folks have suggested whether in part this is all due to the recent change of jobs I have gone through, and the fact that I am now exposed to a larger target audience, where vast majority of that IBM population do not know me much, (nor of my work habits): the email-less man who IBM gave birth to in February 2008. It could well be, but then again it was already happening from the beginning of the year when I was still doing my former job, which makes it even more intriguing altogether. I am certain that, at this point in time, you may be wondering what this is all about and what do I mean when referring to the fact I am now back to basics, once again, having gone through a massive reboot of everything I have been doing in the last few years on walking the talk, leading by example, with my extensive use of social networking tools in a business context. Well, it looks like I am now going to resume a more regular blogging frequency on the topic of "Life Without eMail", because apparently many folks out there, within my own working environment, have never heard of it and still keep bombarding me with email after email, resulting in a rather alarming increase of email volume to handle, implying as well for that matter, and I am myself spending a whole lot less time in social networks while processing it along accordingly.  Yes, during Year 6 - Weeks 1 to 20, I have gone from the good average of 15 emails received per week throughout the year for 2012 to, currently, 31.25 emails received per week, which is just huge compared to the range of emails received in the last 2 to 3 years. Take a look into the weekly progress report from those first 20 weeks, and please do pay attention at the data from Week 20. It will be rather telling altogether, so you can see what I mean:   You could say that the vast majority of that incoming email volume has been provoked by my new team members and, to be frank, that hasn’t been the case, at all. Most of our collaboration and knowledge sharing happens in open, social spaces, for folks to participate in as they may see fit, along with some other protected, private ones. What I have noticed though, is a sudden increase of incoming email volume from people outside my immediate teams and for a good number of reasons that I have spotted so far. Because I am now working in a completely different area (Have gone from IBM Software Marketing, into IBM’s CIO Organisation) I have seen plenty of email traffic that would be flagged as political, bullying, unnecessary reporting, delegated tasks on to you, and a whole bunch of other aspects that have clearly reminded me why I got started with ditching corporate email back in the day. And while I have tried to be rather condescending and understanding that not everyone wants to buy into living social AND open, I think I am just about to harden up substantially and become bolder when challenging people’s behaviours on how they keep abusing, and killing, each other’s productivity. I guess after 20 weeks waiting for those folks to re-adjust some of their behaviours and become more socially savvy, and not seeing much progress along the way to adapt to that new kind of mindset, it’s now probably a good time to awaken that outrageous optimist heretic, free radical, corporate rebel, hippie 2.0 side of me and fight back! I guess it’s time for me to start challenging, just like I did at the beginning, how people work and entice them into open up their eyes AND minds into new, more effective ways of getting work done through social / open streams.  You may be wondering why do I bother about all of this, after all, right? I mean, I proved the point for a good number of years that it is possible to live a life without email, so why keep things running as we move further along? Well, probably because I am stubborn enough to believe all of these digital tools will eventually help us transform how we collaborate and share our knowledge, making it much more purposeful and meaningful altogether. Probably also because over the course of the years I have learned to become more patient, and be resilient enough, to persevere and continue to walk the talk accordingly to show and demonstrate how it’s possible to have such a life without relying so badly on email to get work done or, even, to justify it. Probably, because, deep inside, I still feel rather strong about challenging folks, through constructive dialogue, and practical hints and tips and other pragmatic advice, about thinking different, about fighting that inertia that has trapped them for years in thinking "eMail as the default knowledge sharing, communication and collaboration tool, so why would I change? Not worth it". Well, it is worth it. It always has been worth it and will always be… I suppose I am an outlier, a rebel with a cause, after all. And after this week, in particular, even more so, once I am done with it and I finally received the total amount of 99 emails (As you can see from the report shared across above) in a single work week! Goodness gracious me! 99 emails!! That’s the highest number of incoming emails I have received for a single week in almost 6 years!! [Previous one was 60 in 2008] And talking about rebels with a cause. This working week, which is now a thing of the past, reminded of an interview I got done with one of the smartest people I have had the pleasure of spending some time with to learn what Social / Open Business is all about, along with a whole new concept that I am sure you would all be hearing about plenty more, over the course of time, around smarter workforce. Yes, I am referring to the absolutely delightful interview I had the pleasure to be invited to by Rudy Karsan, CEO of Kenexa, an IBM company, and which he then wrote about on this rather insightful blog post under the heading "Introducing The Smarter Workforce Profile: Luis Suarez".  Why does it remind me of where I am, right at this moment, when I am stating "I am just going back to basics", you may be wondering, right? Well, initially, because, to date, it’s probably the most accurate, insightful and relevant interview I have given, out there, on the topic of Social / Open Business and "Life Without eMail". It basically explains why did I start it in the first place, how I have been moving along with it, and what’s meant so far, and, most importantly, what drove me to kick it off as far as benefits are concerned and on the working week where I have received 99 emails for the whole week, it’s a tremendous refresher, and a huge energy boost, to identify, refine and remind myself why, despite the hard reset, there is no turning point for yours truly, other than keep pushing, and perhaps not as gently anymore as I have in the last few months. Here is one of my favourite quotes that pretty much describes what I do and why I am so passionate on this topic:  "[…] This  convinced me more than anything else that social is the way of the future, and I found his courage inspiring. What came out of my conversation with him was that there were three things that drove him to do this. The 1st was to bring about efficiencies. The 2nd was that outcomes are better when people collaborate rather than compete. I was fascinated by his notion that email is more of a competitive than a collaborative norm, as it is more about ‘I’ than ‘Us’. The 3rd was that social is the ideal venue, according to him, of teaching-and all humans have this yearning to teach and share knowledge-because somewhere, somebody will find our words meaningful and respond accordingly. What struck me in particular was that there are very few people I know who have no almost no sense of fear in their decision-making, and Luis is one of those. He is driven more by purpose which enabled him to overcome fear. Now, lots of books have been written about how to be an entrepreneur and how to do things very differently, and I think that is fascinating to watch somebody in a massive organisation like IBM be able to execute on their vision of the world because their sense of purpose is stronger than fear of consequences." [Emphasis mine] Yes, I know, I would be drooling, too! In fact, I still am. Feel free to read further on through the interview itself, if you would be interested, while I would ask you to bear with me for a few, while I try to clean up the mess on my keyboard. But that’s it. Those are big, big words that, over the course of last few months, i seem to have forgotten, ignored or neglected altogether, and somehow I need to get them back: Efficiency, Outcomes, Collaboration, Teaching, Meaning, No Sense of Fear and, my favourite, Purpose. Not bad to put them all together as an opportunity for me to re-focus on what I need to keep focusing on, specially, after nearly 6 years gone by: Life Without eMail not just for me, but for everyone else around me, too!  Indeed, it’s a larger group, a much larger one, but then again I’m fully committed. Remember, I’m pretty stubborn, rather resilient, flexible enough to understand the dynamics and act accordingly and, above all, incredibly patient to keep pushing for that business transformation of how we share our knowledge and collaborate further through Open Business. You could say I have just re-gained my status of a Rebel with a Cause, because, to me, it just feels like it.  This whole new experience for myself of what has just happened this working week with such a high number of incoming emails may have just signalled how I may have now reached the bottom of it all, a new beginning, a completely new beginning, and from here onwards I suppose there is only one way left: upwards and onwards! Thus here we go. Upwards and Onwards with "Life Without eMail" through the point of no return and using our usual Google Plus Community to continue to help educate, teach and facilitate further into that Open Business Transformation, while we keep going for repurposing email in a work context and put it back where it belongs, at long last! Hope you will join us! 

It has been nearly two weeks since the last post that I put over here in this blog, so I am sure that plenty of you folks out there may have been thinking I have been on holidays, or taking the typical summer break, and that at some point in time I may well be coming back to blogging on a regular basis, along with picking up my external social networking activities. Well, not really. I have just concluded, and be dealt with for good, I hope, what I think is the first time ever in my 13 years of social software exposure what I never thought I would be confronting: a week of denial of the Social Web. Goodness! That was intense. Indeed, to the point where it nearly broke me apart and made me gave up on the whole thing altogether. Those who know me well, specially, fellow colleagues, know that the last two to three weeks have been incredibly emotional at work and with quite a draining toll that I don’t even have the energy just yet to write about. And those two last weeks of July finally paid off with this last week of denial for the Social Web where I just basically withdrew from the whole thing. And it was painful. Very painful. And it was ugly. Very ugly. With the end result that at the end of the day I just had to bounce back. That’s just what passion does for you, I guess. It lets you go through your odd moments of weakness, so you can do plenty of thinking and reflection on what’s going on with you, your surroundings and whatever else you may be interested or rather passionate about, to then help you re-focus and bring back the phoenix in you, restore the faith, restore the commitment, the urge, the purpose and meaning of wanting to still make a difference and, in a blink, just like it started, that week of denial is just gone. Gone to never return! Perhaps what kicked off that week of denial was that article I put over here under the heading "Google Plus - Who Owns the Filter Bubble?", more than anything else, because my last haven for hope for the Social Web out there just vanished into becoming what most social networking tools are nowadays at best: vulgar and ordinary, just to help us continue being stoned with that digital bliss where it seems to be the only model that works is to have you glued to your computing device(s) hitting refresh constantly, so that you wouldn’t miss a single thing happening from what’s delivered to you by those so-called social networking providers that keep claiming they know better than yourself what you need, when they themselves refuse to engage or provide you with support, thinking that, after all, you are just that, the mob. And you know how it goes. We don’t talk to the mob. We just keep it entertained and hooked, so that we can get away with our own agenda(s). Well, I have got news for all of you. Enough is enough. It’s time to wake up, everyone! There is just a whole lot more in life than just being an ignored product of the system. Life is too precious to waste it just like that.  See? The reason why all of these social networking tools are so popular with 2.0 practitioners is not necessarily because of the technology, which is, as I have said above already, rather vulgar, ordinary and miserable, if, as a result of it, your own health is at risk. It’s actually the people who keep dragging us all into the whole thing. Vast majority of practitioners don’t really care what features a social networking tool may well have or not, if the community is there. You stick around because those people who you have built wonderful personal (business) relationships with over the course of time they keep coming back, just like you do. That’s actually one of the reasons why I haven’t been actively sharing content across, but I have been observing how my networks have been interacting during that week, without me, and, interestingly enough, things have changed quite a bit and not sure it’s for the better. But I think I may know why that’s happening, because I am starting to see it at work as well. And it’s not pretty.  A couple of days back, I celebrated my fourth month on the new job as a Lead Social Business Enabler at IBM and it just feels like such a long long time ago already. I guess time flies when you are still having lots of good fun enjoying what you do the most: enabling and helping practitioners adapt to a new way of working where collaboration and knowledge sharing through social technologies take a new meaning by becoming more open, trustworthy, public and transparent. Essentially, more effective and productive at the same time by understanding that the corporate world is no longer ruled by the scarcity of knowledge stocks but by the abundance of knowledge flows through multiple social networks. The thing is though that, while I have been getting more and more involved with the new job, where scalability has taken a new meaning for me, I have had a chance to witness, and experienced fully!, how the 2.0 bubble I may have lived in for the last 6 to 8 years may have already burst. For good. Why? Well, for multiple different reasons that I am going to be blogging about over the course of time, but mainly because of a single one to kick things off: knowledge workers are no longer allowed to Play, Learn, Work, as my good friend, Harold Jarche blogged about beautifully just recently. No, they are not. They are just told, advised, and encouraged to just carry on their work into exhaustion, as if they were androids. And what would you expect they would do? Indeed, they have, eventually, become commoditised robotic entities that do their work and once those resources are no longer deemed helpful or relevant they are easily disposed of.  It’s certainly, extremely worrying, how all of that passion, enthusiasm, energy, and huge effort by early adopters and first thinkers on helping set the stage, act as pathfinders, provide the initial roads to get started with that wonderful journey of becoming a Social / Open Business are now things of the past. That’s what I have been noticing these past few days while going through that stage of denial of the Social Web. You see? People nowadays are just putting check marks on their massively ever growing to-do lists that they have tweeted, plussed, facebooked, linkedined and what not, so that they can move back into their real work: the one that doesn’t require critical, constructive thinking, engaging, conversing, caring, or helping others and so forth for that matter. Essentially, people are back to what has gotten them to the stage of being androids: their meetings and email Inboxes. Those wonderful hide-out places where you can just get by, good enough, pretending you are working, when you know you aren’t. But, hey, that’s what your boss wants you to do, right? Why change? Why bother? Why trying to look for new, better, more effective ways of working if your boss and your senior management / leadership team(s) keep accumulating fatter and fatter bonuses anyway? You know, you are just sitting inside of your own little mental cubicle, your own comfort zone, that one that doesn’t require you to think much in order to go through 12 to 14 hours of hard automated work each day for who knows what business value.  It’s really interesting to see what you get to learn when you start questioning everything you have believed in over the course of the last 13 years, in this case, for me, around social networking, but even more interesting when instead of going into broadcasting mode, that is, that industrialisation of your social activities, just like everyone else is doing, you decide to pause and reflect and see how people really interact. Don’t worry, you won’t have to look into it with much detail. Actually, people just don’t interact anymore. They post whatever they have been told they need to share across, or, even better, they scheduled it all, so that they don’t have to leave their Inboxes and really important meetings, then they place the check marks on their to-do lists and the whole thing dies. Right there. But, you know, that’s all right, because they have done their work already, that is, put a check mark in their lovely spreadsheet, so that it all shows lovely green even though no-one else would be looking into it anyway. You see? This is what’s happening right now. And not just externally, but also internally, behind the firewall, with all of those Enterprise Social Networking tools and across the corporate world. We have defaulted to stop learning, to stop with all the play and, eventually, we have stopped to do our real work more effectively (The work we are truly passionate about), when we all know we can deliver and so much more, but, yet, we don’t, because we no longer feel engaged employees anymore and our managers, bosses and senior leadership teams are right there ready to remind us through our monthly paychecks and bonuses what happens when you are not heads down supposedly.  Exhaustion and overwork, but, specially, fear (I will be blogging plenty more about this one, not to worry), are not helping people go out and play with other fellow social networkers, in order to promote and engage on meaningful conversations to get work done. Instead, people just keep putting on more and more hours of work, just because they want to keep up with those extra work pressures that have been imposed on them, as they wouldn’t want to lag behind their colleagues. See the trend? It gets better. Managers and senior leadership only care about how much money you have made for them today. Anything else is redundant and they will keep reminding you of it, in case you didn’t deliver the fat bonuses to their front door. So when they come to you telling you you need to be social they all make it look like it is, yet again, another spreadsheet to fill-in, put the checkmarks in place and move on. It’s easier to manage individuals as exhausted and overworked androids than to treasure and nurture powerful networks that thrive in free flows of knowledge where the hierarchy is no longer the one that calls the shots anymore. You need to earn both the merit and your reputation with total strangers. Every day. Every single day of the year. Year in, year out. And that’s pretty though, you know, specially, when you are not used to. So what do you do?  Very simple. The same good old thing you have been doing all along, except that at the moment you have got a new spreadsheet with a bunch of to-dos where it says "Be social or else. Spread around my own messages, so I don’t have to do the homework. Represent the brand according to the corporate branding guidelines, never mind your own personal brand, we don’t care, and, above all, ensure our customers know about our same good old messages, because we still know more than they do". Whoahhh! I know! That’s what I keep seeing, more often than not, when I hang out on both internal and external social networking tools nowadays as I watch, learn and observe how people pretend to interact on the Social Web.  My goodness! Where did we go wrong?!?! How could we possibly waste 6 to 8 years of some wonderfully inspiring 2.0 thought leadership that we knew was going to change the business world for good? Where did we get off the train? Why have we stopped this absolutely inspirational journey to go out there and keep making a difference? And instead go back right into our comfort zones, our spreadsheets, meetings and email, where little thinking is required and minimum action is encouraged so managing things still is relatively easy. Exactly, that’s why I needed to finish off with my own week in denial of the Social Web. That’s why I needed, I wanted it!, to bounce back. I had enough of it. It was just killing me to witness how all around me, both inside and, most worryingly outside!, over the course of the last three weeks, I have spent far too much time experiencing what that exhaustive, overworked, under pressured work mentality can do to the corporate world. To all of us, me included. And, in essence, it’s managing to do one thing very well: kill all of our passion, all of our critical thinking skills, because we just want to fit in, all of our motivation and purpose to want to do interesting and relevant things, and, eventually, become, at long last, an engaged employee.  That’s why instead of giving up on it altogether and move on with the flow (with that rather dangerous inertia of just wanting to blend in, not being noticed) I decided, over the weakend (while I have been on full recovery mode from some rather exhaustive and emotional work experiences through multiple interactions with the business 1.0 world, but equally inspiring and rather thought provoking - I am really looking forward to blog some more about) to … bounce back! To keep up the fight. Because, amongst several other things, there can be no resilience without transformation. And this is what it is all about, folks: transformation and our ability to shake up everything we have been experiencing and living over the course of the last 150 years and realise that in order for us, knowledge workers, to survive in today’s corporate environment, the sooner we adapt to living the values and philosophy of Social / Open Business and how they apply to how we work, the sooner we will finally transform not only the way we work, but also the way we live. And that’s just so important. Why? Well, because since a few years back it’s a matter of our own mere survival: that one of the Knowledge Web Worker, finally, fully embracing that digital transformation we all keep talking about, but that we keep seeing slipping away from our fingers time and time again, because we refuse to change.  Change is hard, I think we all know that, but it’s now time to take a new grip. And don’t let go. Play, Learn and Work like you have never done before! It has always been part of our human nature, an integral part of who we are, so we might as well awaken ourselves and embrace what’s inevitable: our very own human digital transformation.  Boy, I am game. And you? 

One of the interesting things that I have been exposed to over the course of time, specially, as more and more knowledge workers embark on their own journey of using social networking tools in a business context is how there seems to be this notion that we are almost done with that digital transformation. Meaning that those who have been using these social technologies for a while now feel like their work is done and dealt with in terms of that very same digital transformation. To them, it feels like it is time to move on and everything, in order not to stagnate or lag behind. The reality though is much different. We are just at the beginning of it all. We are just getting started.  Over the course of the last few months there have been multiple tipping points at work in our attempt to become a successful Socially Integrated Enterprise that kind of made me feel like as if my job as a Social / Open Business evangelist is now done and dealt with and it’s probably a good time now to start making the move into something else. One of those tipping points is of particular importance and relevance, since it comes all the way from the top (Finally, after over a decade of exposure to social networking tools) and I am hoping that I may be able to talk about it soon enough, but the intriguing thing is that while I was reflecting on that fact, that is, on whether my job as a Social Computing evangelist was now complete, my network(s), eventually, had other thoughts for me. You know what they say, networks will always outsmart you left and right no matter how much you think you know about your own subject matter expertise, skills and experience, so best thing you can do is listen to what they have to tell you. And learn.  That’s essentially what I have been doing over the last few days, while I have been going through that week of denial of the Social Web that I talked about yesterday. It’s been an interesting journey for yours truly all along through that long week of struggle and plenty of moments of weakness, because as I got to question everything that I have believed in over the course of the years on the impact and key role of social networking tools to change the way we work, interact and make business, one feels like once you reach through enough tipping points you are on your way out on to better things, hopefully. But then again your network(s) will always remind you as to whether it’s the right time for you to make a move or to stick around for a little while longer. After all, they know plenty more about you than you think you do about yourself.  And that’s what happened last week when fellow colleague Ruchi Bhatia pointed me in the direction of this absolutely brilliant short video clip that clearly describes where we are at the moment in that journey of the digital transformation. It’s a bit over 3 minutes long, but worth while going through it all the way. Specially, if you would also want to witness the power of storytelling coming together nicely. The video clip features a short interview from my good friend Andy McAfee who tells a very inspiring, insightful and powerful story about the inventor of chess and how that correlates to our very own digital transformation that we have been experiencing for a little while now. It’s one of those videos that you would want to watch every now and then, as a social business evangelist, to remind you where we have been, where we are now and where we would need to be in terms of realising that full transformation of the business world in the near future, never mind our very own societies.  If, as a social business evangelist, you feel that your job is done, because you sense that everyone gets it, and it’s time for you to move on to the next thing, whether it may well be Mobile, Big Data, Social Analytics, Cloud Computing or whatever else, that video clip will certainly help you adjust your mindset accordingly, just like it did for me. Why? Well, not going to spoil it for you folks, you will have to watch through it, but, essentially, because of a single key message that Andy himself shared on that short interview and which is a brilliant reminder to inspire you back out of your potential moments of weakness, get that extra boost of energy and enthusiasm and re-focus on what really matters: we are just at the beginning.   And more shockingly, we haven’t even seen anything yet. Andy, once again, setting the record straight on helping us re-find that purpose, that meaning that keeps pushing us forward: start leading your very own digital transformation.  Today.

Imagine if all of a sudden you decide to embark on an experiment where you try to figure out what it would be like to live without access to the Internet over a certain period of time not only for your day to day work, but also for your personal life. Complete switch-off from everything online. Would you be able to do it? And, if so, for how long? Imagine if that experiment then turns out to be, eventually, the worst of nightmares as it becomes your new reality and for much longer than you anticipated and your work that depends on it (as a knowledge (Web) worker) goes into an unpleasant halt you just can’t get out of any time soon. Would you be able to hold it for any much longer? Well, don’t imagine, that’s the story I’ve been going through myself in the last few weeks as I got to experience, first hand, and in full force, how Movistar killed the Web Star. There are times where one’s patience starts to run out. You know, you try really hard to be patient, you always aim for doing your very best at it, but you still run out of it nevertheless no matter what. Well, mine just did. And it is not pretty. Reality kicks in. After 52 days (Yes! 52 days exactly today!) of waiting for my local telco / ISP provider, Movistar (Telefónica), to, finally, get their act together and transfer the old existing landline and ADSL connection to my new home place in another town I can now confirm how Movistar itself treats over 10 years of customer loyalty: really sorry, but it looks like you are pretty much screwed and we just can’t care less for you nor your working needs. Tough luck.  See? That’s what Queen Betweens do. Or, basically, what single monopolies tend to do over the course of time: squeeze their customers to no end charging them through the roof for their own profit for services you can’t use fully by constantly ignoring your needs while providing you with everything but a delightful experience. More of a horrifying experience, if I may add. Why? Because they can. Because they can’t care less about who you are, what you do, what your needs and wants may well be or what the potential consequences of their exponential incompetence at failing to provide what they themselves call "good" customer service may well be. They don’t. They can’t. They won’t. Ever. 52 days and counting… This is the story of a 10 year long loyal customer of a local, nationwide, telco provider who has had just about enough of being treated like utter crap, mostly because, you know, I am just A customer. Like any other customer. So who cares, right? I am just incredibly easy to ignore and delight accordingly, apparently. Remember those good old times from over the course of last 2 to 3 years when plenty of businesses have been pouring down our throats their lovely marketing messages about how we are living in a hyper connected, always-on, digital mobile world where businesses can now provide individualised and incredibly customised excelling experiences to clients based on their needs and wants? Well, let me tell you something: what a bunch of bollocks! At least, for Movistar, as it’s taken them over 50 days (and still counting!) to accommodate the needs of one of their many customers. And the answer I keep getting back is that the issues will be sorted out really soon. 52 days later, *nothing* has happened other than being charged over 250€ for a set of services I just don’t have. Not even a single "We’re sorry for the inconvenience" coming through! The thing is that I am not A customer. I mean, if I were a client who may not have had an urging need to use the Web and the telephone as his primary means of income and revenue, I would probably be ok without the phone nor the Internet for nearly 2 months. The thing though is that I *am* a knowledge Web worker and, as such, I pretty much *live* on the Web. I do have a constant need to be hyper connected, always online, so I can carry out work with clients, wherever and whenever they may well be, while collaborating and sharing our knowledge together over the (Social) Web. Yet, I can’t, because Movistar, apparently, after 10 years of being loyal to them, still doesn’t know me, nor my needs or requirements to conduct knowledge Web work. Yes, apparently, 10 years aren’t enough to get to know who your customers really are. Troubling, really. And frustrating to no end! The end result? Me losing customers (and revenue!!) every single day gone by so far! With the move to the new home, and as some kind of cruel punishment by Movistar inflicted upon myself for wanting to start a new life (You can probably sense now how frustrating things can get when you are excited about moving to a new home, but yet you can’t work at it as I’ve done over the last 12 years as a remote worker!), I have lost the opportunity to constantly keep working on the pipeline for 2015 for new work, which was the original plan for this month, December, for yours truly. I have also lost the opportunity to continue working with current clients because we just can’t hold up any kind of knowledge work like collaborating remotely through digital tools, video conferencing, conference calls, etc. etc. Everything is on a stand still, except for paying bills, of course. Even those to Movistar itself for a service they keep failing to provide across for nearly two months now.  The thing is that in terms of remote customer support through Twitter, SMS messages, phone calls and what not, the client experience has been incredibly delightful. The fire extinguishing activities keep mounting up by the day and the folks behind @Movistar_es keep doing a good job in taming and containing my patience from turning into rage, although lately, the responses and keeping me up in the loop is starting to fall behind, probably because they are getting just as tired and frustrated as I am right now as we speak for not seeing the issues getting sorted out any time soon. Bless them for the superb piece of work they are doing in camouflaging the utterly crappy service Movistar is providing to this customer at the moment. Bless them for totally understanding my problem, or so they tell me, of not being connected and losing revenue day in day out, and doing their best, which, apparently, hasn’t resulted in much happening anyway, as I am still without a landline nor ADSL, after a few weeks gone by, but I am still paying for that lack of service. Oh, the many joys of the Community Management Team. See why that whole system is broken? Bless them for trying though, they have just been eaten alive by the system along with yours truly.  It all started on November 7th, 2014, when I requested the transfer of the landline and ADSL to my new home place and I was told the whole process would take between 5 to 20 days. I told myself, perfect timing, as I will be travelling for the remainder of November to 3 different countries to do work for clients, and upon my return it would all be installed and ready for me to carry on with my job. Wishful thinking. On the same week I got back I got a phone call from one of the local technicians telling me that the place where I now live doesn’t have any more free physical telephone line connections, so they would need to put a new box, which may require another 5 to 20 days for it to be processed. Panic mode kicks in as December starts and I can’t do any work any more from my home office. Yes, I know, I have been stealing the wi-fi at friends’ homes for pretty much any kind of urgent work, but it’s been incredibly embarrassing to admit to them how much money I get to spend for a service I’m not getting while I’m using theirs. Frustrating to no end that here we are, last day of 2014, and we still have got these connectivity issues in a more hyper connected and always-on world that ever. But is it really? Apparently, it isn’t! Weeks go by and I get another phone call where I am advised that things are going to be a bit tough because to get a new box is going to be challenging as they are no longer investing in copper, by in fibre (which will take still a few more months to come where I currently live, so not a choice), and the whole process of funding, just for that box, would need to kick in. There aren’t any guarantees, I got told and at that point the first glimpses of desperation and rage kick in as I keep telling them they just can’t cut me off the Internet grid, because of a box. What am I supposed to do with my job as a knowledge (Web) worker?!?!?! Please! Can we get a sense of reality kicking in on the kind of impact such decision would be having not only upon myself, but the family I’m trying really hard to sustain without falling apart into pieces? Apparently, not! A few days more go by and I got another phone call where I’m told they finally got the confirmation the box funding went through, the request was processed and it’s just a matter of a day or two for a local technician to come along, install it all, and we are back in track. No, we aren’t. I was advised that on December 29th, the local technician would be coming along and do the magic. Alas, no magic happened, I am afraid, only a steady increase of being ticked off about what’s happening. I just can’t believe it. I’m still disconnected and not a chance to know when exactly it would all be fixed, specially, during this Festive Season where everything seems to go on a pause till after January 7th. My goodness! Can I wait for another 2 to 3 weeks?!?!?! No, I can’t! I need to start working again and pronto! But you have got the 3G / 4G on your mobile plan, right? Yes, I do, but that’s not been very helpful, either, as I currently have got a 6GB quota allowance per month that, given the kind of work I do, I pretty much basically burn it all out in about 2 to 3 days and, once again, here  I am, back to stealing friends’ wifi connections at their own homes. The level of embarrassment and apologising keeps increasing by the minute. Desperation increases a notch or two when you realise it may well be about mid-January next year when it all may be fixed, if at all (as I was wrongly? advised on another phone call not long ago, where I thought it would be mid-December… No, mid-January, apparently). Unreal! You can now see why I have pretty much run out of patience already, right? Well, it gets much worse! Because the mobile telco is the same ISP that’s supposed to fix the issues (i.e. Movistar) and I am only getting charged more and more money by extending the mobile quota of data. But "what about public wi-fi spaces where you live in the south of Gran Canaria that you could use?", you may be wondering, right? Well, once again, no good news, I am afraid, as Wi-Fi Finder tells me there aren’t any around me within a close distance and I can only go into a hotel to pay for a daily fee speeds that would take me back to the late 90s. Yes, I’ve tried it already and it’s not even a mild option to consider.  "Of course, you know, that happens to you because you live in paradise island and people are on holidays over there!!!", you may be thinking as well right? Really? Here we are, once again, coming close to 2015 and we still think that way? Let me share with you all the incredibly huge missed opportunity by that same telco / ISP provider AND the various local government organisms AND perhaps also the European Union in their so-called efforts to digitised Europe on what they are missing by not working the magic of free public wifi spaces across the board. Go back 10 to 15 years ago, when you use to go on holidays to sunny paradise islands in the middle of nowhere. How did you get in touch with your family and loved ones back then? A long distance phone call, reverse charge, perhaps? A postcard? Complete silence till you got back? What do you do nowadays when you go on holidays? How do you keep up with your loved ones and share with them what a wonderful holiday you are having and find out how they are doing as well instead? I bet it’s not a phone call, or a postcard, or just complete silence. I bet it’s all pictures, video clips, snippets you feel inspired to create and then share them across the Web by costing you an arm and a leg in hugely expensive roaming charges or countless hours of hunting down a decent Internet connection somewhere. Over the weekend, as an example, I was eating lunch at a restaurant when a guest, an older lady, asked the owner whether he had free wifi or not and when he said he didn’t she humphed and left the place (lost another customer right there!) reminding me, once again, about the huge opportunity of not thinking that the Web should start to become as pervasive as electricity is nowadays… Even a right! No, it’s probably better to remain a monopoly by some telco providers as I am currently stuck in this situation. Unless Movistar transfers that phone line I won’t be connected through ADSL / wifi any time soon. I can’t go to any other telco providers as they hold the physical line work themselves. I can’t go to Internet satellite providers as they are even pricier and for rather poor connectivity coming along. I just can’t live on 3G / 4G unless I drastically change my working habits, or perhaps even find another kind of job, which has crossed my mind over the course of last few days as I keep contemplating Plan B & C that I have written about in a former blog post. See? This is how screwed up the whole situation is that I have to contemplate the prospect of changing my entire career and look for other job opportunities where being connected is not very much needed, but just a nice-have thing to have for when you come back home from work. And all of that due to the sheer incompetence of a telco / ISP that just doesn’t care much about the potential impact of their non-service to their customers even though they are paying loads of money for services they are just not using!  That’s the main reason why I have been offline for vast majority of the time since I shared my previous blog post and while I thought I would be coming back to the social grid shortly, it looks like it’s not going to happen any time soon. Even worse, I don’t think I’d ever get a single response to this blog post, never mind getting the issues sorted out in a timely manner (Remember, 52 days and still counting…). It probably even won’t be noticed, because, you know, after 10 years of being their customer, they just don’t know me much. They don’t seem to have enough data of myself, throughout all of this time, to make an educated decision of fixing the issues as soon as possible, as they have now screwed this customer for good.  A couple of years ago I blogged on how Social Business is all about People to People Business and, ironically, featuring Movistar themselves as a success story. Oh, my goodness!, how naïve I was back then! I guess I can now withdraw those words from here onwards and confirm, sadly, that Movistar is everything but a people to people business. It’s more of a Queen Between with an urging need to die a slow and painful death pretty soon IF they keep on working this hard to disservice their loyal customers! Yes, I’m an optimist and I know there is hope, but will they, finally, get their act together and help me before I move on? The clock is ticking… Time is the new currency. They have already lost 52 days and counting …     Written by Luis Suarez Chief Emergineer and People Enabler. A well seasoned Social / Open Business evangelist and 2.0 practitioner with over 15 years of experience on knowledge management, collaboration, learning, online communities and social networking for business; and has been living, since February 2008, a (work) life without email challenging the status quo of how knowledge workers collaborate and share their knowledge by promoting openness, transparency, trust, sustainable growth, engagement, connectedness and overall smart work. He can also be contacted over in Twitter at @elsua or Google Plus. [PS. If you happen to have read this article, currently live in Playa del Inglés, Gran Canaria, and can offer a coworking space with a decent Internet connection where I can start working right away or if you think you can help out with my current connectivity issues, please do get in touch. I would love to talk with you!]

After having gone through the longest blogging hiatus I can remember in the 13 years of regular posting I have done through multiple blogs, I guess I can now say it’s a good time for a hard reset. A new start. After all, it’s been nearly 8 months since the last article I put together over here and it just feels very weird. Like I am no longer the person who used to write over here regularly back in the day. Like I have lost? both my blogging voice and style. Like something has been missing and it’s now a good time to, finally, get it back. It does feel like a reboot of sorts, I must confess. An opportunity to perhaps resume my blogging mojo right on the brink of celebrating the 10th year anniversary of this blog later on this year and, this time around, make it stick. But will I be able to though? Will I be capable of coming back in full force to one of my all time favourite Social Web related activities? I don’t know, who knows… At this point in time though, it just feels like an exciting new beginning … and one which I have been waiting for, apparently, a long long time…  The thing is throughout all of these recent past months I have missed blogging a great deal. Writing in the long form is an art, no matter what people tell you about it otherwise. At times, it did feel as if part of my extended brain decided to live a slow and rather painful death, without asking for help, since the motivation to come back has been pretty much intact all along, but both my work as a freelancer and my personal life had other plans, week after week, month after month, till today. I am rusty though. I can feel it. Big time. Words that once used to come out pretty easily no longer do so. Now I have to think twice, or even thrice, before a sentence comes out and makes sense. I guess my muscle brain is no longer used to writing in the long form and snacking around on social networking sites is, finally, taking its toll. It needs to stop. I need to stop it and focus back on writing more long-form. And this time around make it work, if anything, for my own sake and sanity A new beginning, indeed! That’s what it feels like at the moment. Both terrifying and exciting at the same time. A reboot where I may need to re-discover both my, long lost, blogging voice and style. One blog post at a time. Paragraph by paragraph, step by step, figuring out whether I’m still made up of that thing we used to call bloggers, or not. Remember how we used to introduce ourselves back in the good old days before social networking tools kicked in?  I want to come back to blogging. I really do. I have been missing it more than whatever I could have anticipated it in the past and I just can’t explain anymore why it took me so long to come back. I simply have run out of excuses to try to explain it, even for myself. And I have kept failing miserably day in day out. It’s been quite a surreal experience overall to have blogged for nearly 13 years and spend nearly 8 months now with nothing at all. Like taking a sabbatical of sorts, although it’s now time to come back. Can I say I lost the way? Can I say I desperately want to get it back? Will I be capable of getting it back? Will I find the path again to blogging on a regular basis? Or will that same path re-find me again?  I don’t know. I seriously don’t have the faintest of ideas, but I am certainly going to give it a try. Why not? At this point in time there are far many more questions than answers I can offer popping inside my head and perhaps the only thing I can do is dive right in, have a play, unlearn, relearn and iterate again and see where it would take me. Something tells me the person who used to blog over here on a regular basis before the beginning of this year is someone completely different to who I am today. I sense things will be quite different. Substantially different. We’ll have to find out, eventually. But, at the same time, I’m pretty excited about coming back and resume this blogging journey into the unknown. As you can imagine, I have got tons of stuff I would want to write about. Loads of ideas, experiences, insights, things I am doing for both work and in my personal life and somehow I feel I’m just going back to basics, to that nerve-wrecking experience of online publishing with intent, to the bare essentials of what blogging was all about when I first got started nearly 13 years ago: Start now and write!  Oh, and keep writing over and over again. Never, ever, stop writing in the long-form! No matter how good and nurturing the snacking around through social networking sites may well have been so far. It’s now a good time to go for the whole meal without forgetting the lovely dessert, of course! I am ready, are you?

While I was putting together yesterday’s blog post I kept thinking about something that’s been on my mind for a while and which I think is also going to help redefine, or reassure, depends on how you look into it, the next stage of my blogging mojo over here. Essentially, what will I continue to blog about? Over the course of the years, if you have been a long time reader, you may remember how there were a number of themes I kept coming back to from Knowledge Management, to Collaboration, (Social) Learning, Online Communities and, specially, Social / Open Business. Somehow I don’t think any of those would go away any time soon, but thinking it may well be as well a good time to up the game and introduce other topics like Org. Design, Change Management, Social Network Analysis, Wirearchy, and, specially, Employee Engagement, which I realise won’t be a new subject per se, since I have blogged about it for a good while already, but I still feel there is a lot more to share across and talk about. Pretty much like for Enterprise 2.0, since I still feel we are only now just getting started with it and its role in transforming organisations from the inside out.  Almost 10 years ago, Andy McAfee coined the term Enterprise 2.0, as most of you folks out there would probably still remember. However, nearly 10 years later, no-one, or hardly anyone, seems to be talking, writing, tweeting, blogging, etc. anymore about that topic, as if it was left behind and gone with the wind. Remember Web 2.0 as well?  Well, not exactly, perhaps. Let’s have a look into Andy’s original definition for Enterprise 2.0 to see what I mean:  "Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers." A key word, to me, from that short, but rather thoughtful definition is no other than within. You would probably agree with me that there are tons of articles, publications, video clips and what not, about the so-called Enterprise 2.0 between companies and their partners or customers. Social Business has been in full swing for a good while as well and while the former focuses pretty much on a new kind of digital, more collaborative and social tools that have been made available for a good while (as far back as 1994, for example, for the first instances of either blogs or wikis), the latter probably just focuses on the overall transformation of how businesses operate as a whole. Pretty much like the so-called notion of Digital Transformation. But what keeps bugging me is how, despite the abundance of content around the external impact of both Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business, never mind Digital Transformation, there is very very little information available about what’s happening on the inside. Of organisations, that is. If you notice, even when you get to attend conference events around these topics, we always pretty much bump into the very same case studies from companies, vendors and so forth that we keep talking about over and over again for a good few years. Yet, there is hardly any information about newcomers, about their own internal digital transformation through a combination of both Enterprise 2.0 (Tools) and Social Business (Processes AND People). There aren’t just enough new examples of digital transformation journeys, from the inside, available out there. And, I must confess, that nearly 10 years later, it bugs me. And big time.  My good friend Euan Semple quoted, at one point, and I’m paraphrasing, I am sure, something along these lines:  "You just can’t be 2.0 on the outside, if you are still operating 1.0 on the inside" Well, I would probably even go one step further and add that in most cases most businesses out there are still, pretty much, operating as 0.5 organisations, yet, while pretending to be 2.0 on the outside when interacting with their customers and business partners, or even their competitors. I am really sorry, but it just doesn’t work like that. There needs to be first an internal (r)evolution before you can even start thinking about what’s going to happen on the outside. And for multiple reasons that I’m hoping to unpack over the course of time in this renewed vow to resume my blogging mojo. Almost a year ago Andy himself was also questioning (Over at ‘Enterprise 2.0, Finally?’) whether we were starting to see glimpses of that so-called digital (r)evolution through Enterprise 2.0 and while there are tons of signs out there that confirm we have gotten started with that journey I sense we are not even there just yet. Just few glimpses. In fact, we are, only now, just getting things started, more than anything else because almost every single 2.0 practitioner out there who keeps advocating for Social Business and Digital Transformation (yes, there is a new buzzword in town and it’s been there for a good while now!) is realising that the magic needs to happen internally first, before you may venture out there on the open Social Web. Yet, there isn’t enough information, nor content, nor idea exchange, about those internal experiences.  I think I know why that’s happening, and it would probably be a topic for another blog post coming up soon, although my good friend, Thomas van der Wal had a go at it, a while ago, and he pretty much nailed it with this absolutely stunning article titled ‘Getting Good Case Studies in Today’s Competitive World’. Either way, I suspect that resuming my blogging mojo will give me an excellent opportunity to talk plenty more about that internal transformation that I have been working on with several of my clients after I went independent, now almost two years ago, as I have been accumulating tops of additional insights, experiences, know-how, methodologies, and what not, not only from when I used to work at IBM, but also as a freelance adviser. Both diversity and variety of clients over time have given me, probably, a unique opportunity in terms of what’s happening with multiple industries in their so-called digital transformation journeys. It’s now a good time to start sharing them across, don’t you think?  It’s now a good time as well to reconcile Enterprise 2.0 not just with the extenuating external focus we seem to have been enjoying last few years, but perhaps also focus on the inside, which, to me, is where the real magic happens as we get a wonderful opportunity to transform the business world as we know it right from inside the core: the employee experience. Because, you know, after all, ‘happy employees produce happy customers’. Always, no exceptions.